I had originally planned to do a post detailing the design of Convert… from my assy “programmer mockup”… until the finished app. But I figured that this would be much more fun and 1000x less long-winded.

We’re ecstatic that Convert broke into the App Store top 20 this weekend after a fairly quick rush up the charts! Check it out if you haven’t done so yet. People really seem to be into the UI. My favorite reviews are the ones that include tidbits like the following excerpt… these put a huge grin on my face:

We’ve been creating top-notch apps since the App Store first opened. Our apps are used by literally tens of millions of people in all corners of the world. A few of our favorite and most popular apps we’ve created are:

I would love to see how the app’s icon design has evolved as well I am not totally digging the icon right now, I feel like there’s ways to make it sleeker looking, much like the other tap tap tap products’ icons. But then again I’m not a designer, so heh.

Very interesting! It shows the train of thought very nicely and it even made me start rooting for certain design elements (like the color contrast between left and right conversions and the arrow inbetween) and gave me satisfaction when they made it to the final product!

Did Convert start in wireframe, or was it not really necessary for this project? I suppose it’s probably less important when you’re designing a UI that’s almost more object than software, but I found the evolution of functionality in parallel with visual presentation interesting.

I mean, that’s something I do all the time but I’m technically not supposed to.

Absolutely wonderful. This video is the reason I’m really, REALLY wanting this app right now. I’ve already got a visually stunning conversion app with very good UX (ConverBot Mini) which I have never actually needed to use. So, if my willpower loses out, you’ll get my 99¢ simply because of my appreciation for this video and your design process.

Bought it because I love to see the effort you put in - and the final results are wonderful. Too many developers/UI designers chuck something down and decide that its good enough, without doing enough iteration.

Kilograms (kg’s) do not measure force but mass. You can relate kg’s to Newtons since the force exerted to 1 kg (at some point) on the surface of the Earth is about 9.8 Newtons. In your application you convert 1 Newton to 980665 kg which is wrong in so many ways.

The second remark is that 980665 appears in your application as 980,665. This is fine for Americans but very confusing for (most?) Europeans. For us 980,665 is 980 + 665/1000.

A very pleasing app to use, I have to congratulate you on producing such a nice presentation for a unit converter. Unfortunately, it suffers from a few shortcomings to make it a great application:

- There is no way to correct a typo, where is my delete button to undo the last digit entered?

- Adding two different units is a bit too complicated: enter number for first unit on the left, scroll to second unit on the right, tap on the right side, press + and the number for the second unit, and so on. This will lead to repeated errors, as my thinking goes one day “plus” “one” “week”, but I have to enter “select week”, “plus”, “one” (and if do “plus”, “select week”, “one”, my previous sum is wiped out)

- I believe you are missing out on a relatively easy way to score points with non US users: Put the local currencies for the selected region of the device to the top of the list. After all, 90%+ of the time you want to convert from/to your native currency.

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I appreciate the video, and I bought the app, but I was overall disappointed with the lack of interaction polish (as opposed to visual polish). Some examples:

· your finger obscures a lot of screen while scrolling around… you routinely have to either get the finger up, or scroll awkwardly in bits and pieces

· the lens effect on selectors seems confusing at times, especially combined with the above

· if you hold and swipe to change the category, the categories should hide as soon as you release your finger. Now you have to wait a while for the numbers . What’s worse, type-ahead doesn’t seem to be working either in many cases

· categories expanding full screen is actually jerky, even on 3GS

· no backspace button, just clear. What if you make a mistake during the last digit?

· the tap target on the refresh button for currencies is too small – I oftentimes end up activating the category instead of refreshing

Being an “international” guy, I can see myself using it a lot for the currency conversion. All other things I will just use occasionally.

One tip is to somehow limit the list of currencies. Although an impressive list, it is just too tedious to scroll through Swahili Balubas etc when I know I’m mostly interested in 3-4 currencies, USD, SEK, PLZ and Euro…

I already bought another conversion app, but laid down the $2.49 Australian on this app purely cause I loved the way it looks. And if I’m honest I so rarely need any conversion tool… not to mention the fact that besides the other one I bought, I already had another that was free.

Despite many request for PLN to be added within currency converter it seems that they fall on deaf ears??? John, is it really that difficult to add a feature so often requested by users of your software. Do not treat it as a blackmail however I don’t think I’ll buy from the company which doesn’t listen to customer feedback, no matter how beautiful your products are.

Love this app and it amazes me often you find a use for it day-today. That being said, for me there is one thing missing.

In the typography section, could you please include an option to convert ‘em’ (or point it out to me if I have overlooked it). Working between ‘px’ in print and ‘em’ on the web can be a pain to translate. It would be great to be able to use Convert to take the hassle out of it.